Cooking Night

So far, I haven’t really found much time in which I’m wasting time when I could be getting some solid work done (Okay, except for the occasional getting-lost-in-the-Internet-and-blog-world time… 😉 )  The main problem is that I just have too much to do!

One solution I have come up with, though, is to do all my cooking at once.  I tend to get a lot done on the weekends and Sunday nights, but often have trouble focusing when I come home for dinner after a long day of classes, work, studying, and exercising during the week.

My solution? Use that weeknight when I can’t focus to do all my cooking for the week.  Right now, I have brussels sprouts roasting in the oven, acorn squash soup simmering on the stove, and rice & beans in the rice cooker.  When the brussels sprouts are done, I’ll make spaghetti squash and do something with my sweet potatoes.

I’ll eat some for dinner, put some in the fridge, and freeze the rest for later.  And for the rest of the week, all I’ll have to do is reheat what I’ve already made!

While I wait for everything to cook, here’s my eats from today:

Whole wheat tortilla with jalapeno hummus, leftover rutabaga fries, spinach and walnuts. The verdict on this new wrap?  AMAZING.

A Farmer’s Market pear.

Yogurt. This was only my second time having a Rachel’s Exotic yogurt, and I liked it!

And half a Maple Pecan ProBar to hold me over to my late dinner.

Back later with some new recipes!

Early to Rise

Despite my early bedtime, I’m still tired today!  Maybe I need to up my Vitamin D supplement now that its fall?  Another day or two like this and I’ll be putting a call in to my doctor…

Breakfast contained another first for me….

A Nature’s Path Hemp Plus waffle, toasted and topped with almond butter and pumpkin butter. And….

My very first “Green Monster.” I know, I know, its pink instead of green, but blame that on the raspberries!  This one contains a big handful of spinach, a handful of frozen raspberries, 1/2 vanilla fat-free soy milk and 1/2 skim milk, and ground flax. I think I’ll be having more green monsters in my future…

In other news, I planned some extra meals into the menu this week.  I’m hoping to make a bunch of foods from whatever is in season now, freezing it, and having it to reheat when local produce becomes scarce and exams, etc make me too busy to cook.

So what can you expect to see this week?

• Beet Risotto, from Bella Eats
• Spaghetti Squash
• Acorn Squash Chili, from Meghann’s blog and this site

Do you have suggestions for other dishes I can make and freeze for winter?

A delayed post

I don’t know what was up with my appetite yesterday, but I was not hungry at all.  So I apologize for the lack of dinner pics (I did finally eat dinner around 9:30, but it was just 2 bowls of cereal and I forgot to take a picture).

After my classes, I split a PB&J Larabar with Dan, and we took off for the library and Trader Joe’s.

We biked 2.7 miles to the library to pick up some books, then 3.3 to Trader Joe’s, then home.

I’ve been trying to do meal planning to cut back on grocery costs.  Money-wise, it seems to be working.  However, I’ve overplanned, and now have ingredients for three meals that I still haven’t made!  So I’m making those this week, and therefore only had to buy about 5 things at Trader Joe’s… 🙂

For some reason, I wasn’t hungry for lunch until 3:45 or so.  I had a little bit of plain greek yogurt left, so I mixed it with some olive oil, lemon juice, and a little bit of dill weed to make my own tzatziki dip.  I wasn’t a huge fan of the dip, but it was worth a shot.

An Ezekial whole wheat pita with spinach hummus, carrots and zucchini.  And while I liked the taste of the pita, it kept falling apart on me.  Maybe I just got a bad one?

More carrots and zucchini on the side.

I decided to make PB & Chocolate Chip cookies for Dan, since he ran so many errands for me this week!

I’d be lying if I said that 2… okay, 3… of these didn’t end up in my mouth when they came out of the oven.  I had to make sure they tasted good before I gave them to Dan, right?  😉

In an effort to ramp up my flagging appetite, I did another 10.0 miles on my bike.

Distance: 10.0 miles

Time:         36:27 minutes

I topped it all off with some upper body strength training, at which point I was FINALLY hungry.  I had two bowls of Basic 4 + Strawberry Yogurt Burst Cheerios + Raisin Oatmeal Crunch with skim milk.

This morning, I got up early to meet Kim at the Farmer’s Market.  On my way out the door, I grabbed one of my PB Granola bars to eat on the way.  Yum!

I’m spreading out my lunch/snacks today so that I have things to much on while I study.  First up, this delicious bowl of Oikos, golden raspberries, a touch of honey, and a few tablespoons of granola…

A HUGE thank you to Kath’s post for helping me discover the Digital Macro setting on my camera — my food pictures will look so much better now!  I knew not to use a flash, but the pictures were still looking blurry.  The pic above was taken on Digital Macro.  Compare that to this:

And you can see how much of a difference it makes!

Off to study… yay?